Proposal: Power Teams

[dragoon500ly]

On the supplybunker website, we have an interesting article entitled “Social Engineering and Sociogenesis, The Project’s Real Goals.” It’s interesting reading, especially when looking at some of the teams in the Project. This proposal is about two of these, the Power (Mobile) Team and the Power (Generation) Team.

The Power (Mobile) Team is listed as consisting of 73 teams across the country with a total of 200 personnel for an average of 2.7 personnel each.

The Power (Generation) Team is listed as consisting of 16 teams across the country with a total of 400 personnel for an average of 25 personnel each.

That’s it. No further description of duties or equipment. Sooooooo…

The Power (Mobile) Team, in my opinion, would be used to provide power as needed for a variety of missions. Supplying a newly constructed Project base, supporting a survivor community, you get the idea. With an average of 2.7 personnel per team, its not big, implying that it consists of, at most a vehicle hauling a fusion-powered generator or a few dozen fusion power packs. While I believe I understand the rational for a very small team, in my own heresy, I would state that the PMT consists of ten personnel, in three vehicles. Vehicle One is a standard V-150 APC. Vehicle Two is a fusion-powered 5-ton truck that carries a fusion generator and several fusion packs and tows a trailer loaded with a dozen spools of electrical cable and hardware. Vehicle Three is another fusion-powered 5-ton truck that has been modified to mount a combination crane/extendable bucket and towing a trailer loaded with more spools of electrical cable and hardware.

The intent is to provide power as well as a limited capability to string electrical power lines over a short distance, say about a mile or so.

The Power (Generation) Team can consist of fixed bases (such as in Desert Search) or mobile teams that are intended to go to existing power plants and conduct repairs and bring the plants back online, if possible. Needless to say, their caches would have lots of spare parts for their targeted plants!

Thoughts?

[ChalkLine]

As the USA is still a hostile place trenching power lines into the ground makes them less vulnerable, but takes far greater time. I suppose they'll use both techniques depending on the situation.

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

As the USA is still a hostile place trenching power lines into the ground makes them less vulnerable, but takes far greater time. I suppose they'll use both techniques depending on the situation.

Never has made much sense not to dig in looser lines. The utility companies scream about cost,but when a hurricane strikes and you have to rebuild almost from scratch?

I can see above ground lines for temporary use, otherwise dig them in.

[cosmicfish]

As part of the Project mission, I would think that the Power Teams would have two missions:

1) To provide immediate power to critical locations, like emplacing portable fusion plants near a town center to provide power to a hospital, communications center, water supply and purification, manufacturing site, and shared refrigeration location, all arranged or relocated to be adjacent to the power source. In this capacity, they would emplace the power supply somewhere an existing field Team could monitor and protect it, and move on.

2) To assist the populace in restoring existing power generation, transformation, and transmission equipment. The Project can never provide all of the equipment for a complete power grid, so after they have emplaced their portable systems, the next step is to take relevantly skilled workers from the populace and start getting the existing infrastructure running again. This happens only after an area has been reasonably secured, of course.

Permanently-placed Power Teams, as in Desert Search? Zero value in them. Too hard to predict where they will be needed to support the populace, and if the goal it to power Project needs... place the power systems WITH the Project needs.

[cosmicfish]

Also, as part of the regular equipment available to field Teams and at supply bases there should be solar panels and small wind mills with AC and DC converters, paired with deep cycle marine batteries (or some ultratech equivalent). A small town without power can be immensely improved just by having enough power to run a radio and refrigerate medicines and important provisions.

[dragoon500ly]

So solar panels, batteries, windmill generators, perhaps multi-fuel generators, and here's a thought, since gasoline cannot be stored for long periods of time, stocks of fuel stabilizers and perhaps some nanotech that can "clean" up old stocks of gasoline and restore to something useful.

[mmartin798]

More likely a micro refinery to crack the bad gas and diesel into lighter hydrocarbons again. I'm thinking micro brewery for fuel here.

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

More likely a micro refinery to crack the bad gas and diesel into lighter hydrocarbons again. I'm thinking micro brewery for fuel here.

So scale wise, we are looking at about 500 barrels a day maximum output, couldn't find a decent source for size and weight. Another interesting one is something called a micro-refinery, which consists of several skids, each supporting one aspect of the refining process, no info on size/weights, but with a capacity of up to 10,000 barrels per day, I'm anticipating a fairly large set of platforms. Have you got anything on sizes/weights? I

Based on what my limited searches have turned up, I believe that we are looking at perhaps 2-3 micro units and maybe one kick-sized unit.

Thoughts?

[Gelrir]

Here's an actual "skid-mounted" refinery: http://www.peiyangchem.com/modular-r...-refinery.html

There are a couple of options that I can't quite sort out there from their website, but the nice picture of nine 40' ocean cargo containers has weights:

• pipelines and metal structures: 9190 kg
• cooling unit, metal structures, process pumping units: 8650 kg
• evaporator unit, corrosion inhibitor unit, separator with maintenance platform: 8410 kg
• metal structures, process pumps unit 2: 6230 kg
• furnace unit, black-box stairs: 11835 kg
• metal structures, heat exchangers unit, boxes with valves and fittings: 10715 kg
• black box, condensing unit: 8320 kg
• column K-2: 3230 kg
• column K-1: 3420 kg

total: 70,000 kg (suspiciously round!). This is probably their MR5 refinery, which has a capacity of 500 barrels per day (crude oil input), requires 100 kilowatts of power, takes 4 months to assemble, covers one or two acres once assembled. The "user" will also have to clear and level the refinery site, build roads, provide a lot of concrete for foundations, sources of water for cooling and fire-fighting, provide buildings (control, lab, shop, office, etc.; most probably converted from the ocean cargo containers once emptied), storage tanks or pipelines for crude oil and the various products, a truck loading rack, electrical power supply, area lighting, fire protection system including hydrants, compressed air supply, compressed nitrogen supply, and water treatment (or just dump it, if you're that kind of villain). Also the listed components do NOT include the tools, cranes, scaffolding, etc. to assemble the refinery.

Thus for a Morrow Project "refinery in boxes", you might add 11 ocean cargo containers as follows:

• electrical power, presumably fusion
• compressed air (compressor, lots of fittings and pipe)
• nitrogen production and compression
• water supply fittings including fire protection
• electrical power distribution, and lighting
• water treatment (inbound)
• waste water treatment
• storage tank and pipeline fittings
• office, lab, shop and control building fittings, porta-potties, light bulbs, etc.
• trailer spares (mostly wheels and tires)
• installation and construction office and shop (i.e., not stuffed to the roof with equipment), including all the manuals and plans

... so a total of 20 containers. The company states in their literature, "The unit allows a single operator to restart the plant from a cold start in less than four hours and have the plant in full operation." -- this kind of implies not a lot of staff on-site once it's running. Oil refineries do NOT like to be shut down -- if everything cools down you get heavy, cold sludge in all your pipes!

500 barrels per day of crude oil becomes 37,000 liters of gasoline, 22,000 liters of diesel, 7,500 liters of kerosene, and various other petro-chem products.

For the Morrow Project, three big engineering teams would have to participate in getting this going, presuming the civil economy hadn't recovered to provide these functions:

• heavy transport team (semi-tractors, cargo container trailers, shop/repair vehicle)
• at least one Recon or MARS team during transport and construction, as security
• civil engineering team (access and road repair to the site, cement mixing, trenching, grading, obtaining water supply, building foundations, fencing and camp construction, and other site prep)
• construction engineering team (with forklifts, cranes, welders, lots of heavy labor) -- at least 50 people, the company doesn't provide any info on labor force involved in any stage of construction.

A two-axle semi-trailer tanker might hold 5,000 gallons (19,000 liters); so (in very rough terms) if all export is by trailer, the refinery would send out two trailers of gasoline, one of diesel, and half of a tanker of jet fuel.

Thoughts?

--
Michael B.

[Gelrir]

I found a page on a really small "refinery in a box" for third-world nations:

http://www.almonerpetrogas.com/Mini_Refineries

It looks like a lot of it fits in one prefab "butler building", plus a cooling system that looks a lot like a large shallow pool of water. They state only 1 or 2 workers are needed to operate it. They give capacity as 900 tons per month per skid; a metric ton of crude oil is about 7 barrels, so that's about 200 barrels production per day. The plant capacity is given as 200 barrels a day on up. The equipment is shipped in standard 40' ocean cargo containers; if one skid = one ocean cargo container, then the smallest plant is all in one container.

So: for just one container you get 40% of the refining capacity of a 9 container plant; but I suspect this one-container refinery is less safe, produces products not up to the same specifications, won't last as long, and more environmentally harmful. But: much smaller.

If the Project "stocked" these, they'd probably have 4 or 5 containers: one for the refinery itself, and 4 with all the other parts that the "end user" would be expected to provide pre-Atomic War, and the tools for assembly.

Site selection might just be "find a surviving big building near a river or lake and a supply of crude oil."

--
Michael B.

[dragoon500ly]

Looks like the micro-refinery in a box is the best choice so far.

Still, with the number of containers (4-5), it seems more likely for a Power Generation (Base) Team, than for the mobile teams.